What Kind of Power Is 'Love Power'? II - Continuing the Elaboration of a Theoretical Concept

Love, more specifically “love power,” is central in my mode of theorizing contemporary western societies. In the article, “What Kind of Power is ‘Love Power’?” (2011), I outline briefly, three ways in which I have approached this key question. I have done this, firstly, by comparing “love power” with “labor power,” concluding that the two human powers are both similar and basically different, and that both can be seen as specifically human “world creative capacities” (in the sense explicated by Marx); secondly, by distinguishing care and erotic/ecstasy, as the defining elements of the internal dialectic in sexual love; and, thirdly, by asking, what kind of power love power is, looking (in vain) for answers among the so-called “power terms” as presented in dictionaries and applied in most prevailing social and political theories. I conclude that love power would add a new dimension and enrich the whole complexity of power terms. In this paper I will continue to elaborate the concept of “love power” roughly along these three lines. The aim is to explore, develop further, and reflect over the strength and delimitation of my love theory. I will expand the comparative view (labor vs love in Marx) by bringing in and assessing some other, apparently similar or overlapping theories and key concepts where creative and transformative powers are also at the center: some feminist historical-materialist work-/labor-related concepts, and also concepts, generated within other research traditions, in particular “desire” and “erotic power” as variously framed by, or through critical debate with, psychoanalytic theory. Then, drawing on the explorations in the first part of the paper, I seek to explicate further my understanding of love as polyvalent practice and power, and what point I am trying to make by theorizing sexual love and love power in a specific historically located context.